The Boy in the Graveyard
by dazai-san
Summary: Human AU. There's a boy. There's a white haired boy. There's a white haired boy with pale skin. There's a white haired boy with pale skin, and odd teal eyes. There's a white haired boy with pale skin, and odd teal eyes, sitting in the graveyard. Ichigo/Hitsugaya friendship, HitsuHina and Ichigo x mystery person. One-shot.


**A/N:** TBH, I should be working on my other stories.

NO.

Let's start a new one.

 **Summary:** Human AU. There's a boy. There's a white haired boy. There's a white haired boy with pale skin. There's a white haired boy with pale skin, and odd teal eyes. There's a white haired boy with pale skin, and odd teal eyes, sitting in the graveyard. Ichigo/Hitsugaya friendship, HitsuHina and Ichigo x mystery person.

 **Warnings:** Swearing, heterosexuality, angst, stuff, character death.

~oOo~

The day after her funeral, in the fall of 2007, Ichigo stays in bed throughout the entire day. He looks outside the window, briefly, just once, in the afternoon, and sees a child. He seems to be sad as well, from what Ichigo sees of his face, but it's most likely for a different reason.

Nobody comes into his room. His family knows he wants to grieve a little. So they give him a day, with nobody knocking on his doorframe. Ichigo appreciates it.

~oOo~

The next morning he wakes up to a cooling breakfast on a tray next to his bed. He appreciates Yuzu's thoughtfulness but barely touches it. It isn't like he has much of an appetite.

Once again he turns to the window. He sees the same child from yesterday, a boy with snowy white hair, so pure it must be natural. The color is queer, but not quite as odd as the fact that his parents aren't around, or the fact that he's wearing a ragged t-shirt and shorts in the fall, and Japan certainly gets cold this time of year.

Before he can think too much about it, the boy with white hair disappears around the corner.

Ichigo shrugs and for once his mind isn't completely swallowed up by thoughts of her.

Instead, he's wondering how the child is faring in the cold, and where he's going.

~oOo~

The next day he wakes up a little earlier, and ends up finishing his food. He hesitates before shrugging, taking a quick shower, and putting on a jacket and scarf to fend off the chilling cold outdoors.

He heads in the general direction the child was going in yesterday. There's nothing here, he notices. Nowhere that a potentially depressive child might be going.

Ichigo waits an hour, which slowly drips into two. Oddly disappointed by the fact that the child didn't show up, he deflates slightly.

He's out here already, isn't he?

Ichigo turns the opposite way and makes his way up the hill, passing by a sea of unfamiliar people, hurrying to their destinations. Breathing out quietly, his warmer breath colors the chilly air white.

He hesitates more with every step he makes but he still forces himself to do this. Once he's at the top of the hill, he looks around, and his brown eyes widen in surprise.

Sitting in front of a grave— _very close to_ hers—is the white haired boy, clutching a bundle of wildflowers. How he found them is beyond Ichigo, since flowers don't usually grow this time of year, but he watches from a distance as the boy sets the flowers in front of the gravestone and begins to pray silently to whatever god he may believe in.

Out of the blue, so suddenly Ichigo nearly jumps, the boy asks, "Why are you watching? If you're going to pay your respects, do it." He realizes the boy is glaring at him with sharp _teal_ eyes and his skin is maybe paler than it should be.

"S-sorry," Ichigo mutters, making his way around the sitting figure of the child, joining him on the frosty ground in front of her grave.

The boy just huffs and snorts rudely before returning to whatever prayer he was murmuring earlier. Ichigo just stares at the gravestone, reading the words carved into the stone so neatly over and over again. A few flowers are set neatly at the bottom of the grave, probably courtesy of one of her friends.

A handful of pretty hydrangeas is shoved in his face, breaking him out of his trance. "Here," the boy says gruffly, standing in front of him and holding the flowers out to him. "You came unprepared, so here. You can pay respects to whoever you're paying respects to _properly_ with flowers."

Bewildered, Ichigo takes the flowers, studying them briefly. They are fresh, and surprisingly not crumpled. "Uh, thanks…?" he says awkwardly in askance of the boy's name.

"Hitsugaya Toshiro," he replies sharply. "And it's Hitsugaya."

Ichigo sprinkles the flowers over her grave, the way she might've wanted it, the crazy person she was. He smiles slightly at the thought.

"Hey, thanks Hits—Hitsugaya?"

The white haired boy with pale skin and teal eyes isn't standing beside him anymore, and Ichigo looks around wildly.

~oOo~

The next day he visits the graveyard again, this time armed with roses—white, she'd always preferred white ones over red. They are cleaner.

He walks to the cemetery after purchasing a bundle of roses—with thorns. She'd always said roses are only beautiful with their thorns. Ichigo spots Hitsugaya with a huge armful of flowers, setting a few of them on every single gravestone he passes and makes a prayer.

Clearly he notices Ichigo because he gives him a brief nod before continuing. Ichigo just walks to her grave and scatters the roses around her grave, noticing that the snowdrops from yesterday and the bundle in front of her grave are gone, but he sees purple wisteria flowers hanging off her grave. Once again, wisterias are out of season, and he doubts Hitsugaya has money to buy them.

He doesn't question it though.

~oOo~

This goes on for another month, with Hitsugaya already expecting him. He usually says "see you tomorrow", and on the days Hitsugaya doesn't say it, Ichigo brings a friend. Sometimes Renji or Chad goes with him, but Hitsugaya is never there, but the flowers are, invariably.

Ichigo never bothers to read the gravestone that Hitsugaya seems to love the most.

~oOo~

Hitsugaya coughs into his hand before setting flowers on the one he always spends the most time on. "Are you catching a cold?" Ichigo asks, worried. The boy waves a hand flippantly.

"I'll be fine."

That really isn't an answer but when Ichigo tries to press it, Hitsugaya rubs his temples, stands up, and leaves.

Ichigo brings it up again when Hitsugaya has his normally pale cheeks flushed a pale pink. "Where do you stay?" he demands but Hitsugaya just rolls his eyes.

"On the streets. Where else?"

"Come home with me," Ichigo offers.

"No," Hitsugaya immediately denies. "I'll be fine. I'll be here as long as I'm need here, at least."

Ichigo doesn't really understand what that means but he still attempts to convince Hitsugaya to come home with him. It doesn't work.

~oOo~

"Have you been eating?"

"Yes." The _"but not enough to sustain me"_ is obvious by the way Hitsugaya is painfully thin. It doesn't help that he clearly has no other clothing other than the t-shirt and the shorts. The last time Ichigo had offered him clothing, he'd turned it down vehemently.

They lapse into their normal state of silence, broken only by Hitsugaya's increasingly often coughing fits.

This time though, Hitsugaya opens his mouth as soon as he sits down to speak. "This graveyard used to belong to my family, but it was passed on to the Hinamori family," he murmurs, patting the gravestone gently.

Ichigo says nothing, just turning to Hitsugaya and letting him speak. "We weren't rivals, surprisingly. But I was good friends—best friends, actually, with the daughter of the Hinamori family, Momo. And maybe I liked her more than friends. I have no idea if she reciprocated the feelings or not, but it doesn't matter, not anymore, to me.

"Hinamori family and the Hitsugaya family were very closely linked. We were practically family. So Momo's family often supported mine, and us in turn. During my generation, we were in desperate need for help. The Hinamori family obviously helped us—but Momo was killed by pneumonia. Her family was devastated, and they crumbled to pieces—and us as well."

Hitsugaya is silent for a moment, and just as he opens his mouth to say something he breaks into another fit, Ichigo forcing himself to not help him, because the last time, Hitsugaya had the nerve to kick him.

"My entire family was killed; one by overdosing, three by disease, and another by suicide. I'm really the only one left. Both the Hinamori and Hitsugaya families have died out, with only me left." Hitsugaya smiles bitterly. "This is Momo's grave."

Ichigo realizes the last flowers in Hitsugaya's arms are roses of many shades. Hitsugaya stands and tosses the flowers over Momo's grave. "Thank you, Kurosaki—no, Ichigo." The boy smiles genuinely and leaves.

He doesn't say "see you tomorrow" like he usually does.

~oOo~

Ichigo comes alone the next day, holding a large bundle of flowers. A sense of foreboding has settled over him but he makes himself walk at a normal pace.

When he reaches the graveyard, it's covered in snow—which is over a week early, and there have been no reports of snow anywhere.

Ichigo looks around for Hitsugaya, and there are flowers over every grave.

When he reaches her grave, he spots a snowy white head of hair leaning against Momo's grave.

He doesn't call out to Hitsugaya, because he's too shocked to.

The smell of death hangs in the air.

Hitsugaya Toshiro died today.

~oOo~

Ichigo steels himself. "Dad," he says evenly. "You know how I've been going to her grave for over a month now?"

His father, usually so enthusiastic, is somber. "Yes. Why?"

"Well, I think the reason why I got over her death is a kid—he's short, white-haired, and has teal eyes, and calls himself Hitsugaya Toshiro. He died today as well, and I'd like to bury him."

Narrowing his eyes, his father stares at him strangely. "That isn't possible, Ichigo. Hitsugaya Toshiro, the remaining survivor of the Hitsugaya family with that exact description, died over a decade ago."

~oOo~

Ichigo goes to the cemetery the next day, and there is no trace of snow or Hitsugaya anywhere, which shouldn't be possible. As he heads towards her grave, he passes by Hinamori Momo's grave and smiles slightly, dusting off the stone and setting flowers on the dirt.

"Rest in peace," he murmurs quietly and as he stands up, he glances at the grave next to it, which is coated in frost and snow. Raising an eyebrow, he dusts off the white and reads the name inscribed.

" _Hitsugaya Toshiro. Died of pneumonia. 1981-92"_ The death date is fifteen years before now, and the birth date is eleven years before. So Hitsugaya had been eleven when he'd died. And he'd died in the year Ichigo had been born.

It's ironic, really, that Hitsugaya is eleven years older than him when Ichigo had always thought of him as a kid.

He spots a lotus resting at the bottom of the gravestone. Frowning, he bends to inspect it closer and finds nothing too queer about it before realizing what it represents. Smiling, he sets a large bunch of snowy white hyacinths on his grave that he was originally going to spread around the cemetery.

Finally he finds her grave and he sits down in front of it, putting his last bouquet of flowers—white roses—on the base of the grave and smiles.

He dusts off her grave carefully, reading the name on the gravestone once more. How odd that she, Hinamori Momo, and Hitsugaya Toshiro died the same way.

" _Kuchiki Rukia. Died of pneumonia. 1992-2007."_

"I love you. Tell Hitsugaya I say thank you, yeah? Oh, and have a wonderful afterlife."

~oOo~

 **A/N:** DON'T KILL ME! /hides\\\

yes I really did kill of three characters in less than 2000 works T ^ T I am a horrible person I know

please review and tell me what you think! :D


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